CALL tracking pioneer ResponseTap, whose tech is dialling up the value of the phone for sales and marketing teams, will be ringing in more changes after sealing a £3.5m Yorkshire and Clydesdale Bank deal.

That can be drilling down into the wealth of information behind a call and then what factors convert that into a sale over the phone as customers move from websites to calls via contact centres, or what works as a marketing campaign.

Set up by university friends Ross Fobian (chief executive) and Richard Hamnett (chief technical officer) in 2008, ResponseTap’s bespoke software as a service now has more than 2,000 customers and delivers analytics from a million plus calls a month.

Turnover is forecast for £25 million in 2020 as the 90-strong company with headquarters in Manchester opens an office in New York to tackle a US market 19 times the size of the UK’s.

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The explosion of the internet and smartphone usage is why our Call Intelligence exists

Ross Fobian

In the digital stampede phone calls between real people at one time looked doomed to die out, but that gave Fobian and Hamnett, tech experts in search engine optimisation and telecoms, their big, next generation idea.

“While the phone was and still is seen as a disparate and more traditional channel to online, the two are not mutually exclusive,” explains Fobian.

“It helps complete the purchase more effectively and efficiently, especially more expensive and complex ones such as health insurance or an emergency one like the repair for a broken boiler, when the consumer doesn’t want or cannot transact online.”

RESPONSETAP

Chief technical officer Richard Hamnett in the new Manchester headquarters

With ResponseTap announcing new updates and releases typically every month the technology has rapidly evolved, most recently with advancements in machine learning.

Each web page visitor is assigned a unique number for the time they are on a company’s site, so visitor and caller are linked. The software picks up a customer’s website history prior to the call, enabling agents to understand the reason for it, feed in real-time suggestions and next actions to speed up resolutions.

“Some providers simply reveal a website page but ResponseTap looks much further, at key words and marketing campaigns for example. We are the first to integrate Google Analytics and Google Adwords so marketers can see phone sales alongside web sales, “ adds Fobian pointing to the potential for speech analytics among other innovations.

“If calls can be transcribed in real-time and topics of the conversation extracted this will allow brands to intuitively understand customer trends, tastes and the impact their activity has had,” he continues.

Technology aside the company is also partnering with digital and market agencies “as our technology can help them optimise the return on investment from the support delivered to their clients,” says Hamnett.

“Budgets can only go so far and we are educating brands too through webinars and industry blogs on the phone and this data blindspot.”

Now selling in 20 countries and with clients such as Aviva, Bupa, Virgin Money, Go Ape!, Tui and consumer campaigner Which?, the chief challenges figuring on ResponseTap’s radar include finding enough skilled staff, reconciling different compliance systems post-Brexit and changes to data protection rules now coming into force.

All those require investment and Clydesdale’s latest package joins funding from Beringea and Eden Ventures bringing the tally to £9.31 million so far.

“We’re the leaders in making both callers’ and companies’ time as relevant as possible,” says Fobian, “and in serious growth mode.”